Fitness Tips for Women

The core fitness skills that are most suitable for ordinary women are never to copy men’s training plans to hit heavy weights, nor to do aerobics to gain body fat on an empty stomach, but to “make differentiated arrangements that fit women’s natural physiological characteristics, do not follow the general template, and balance the priorities of form, function, and health.”

I recently met a girl friend whom I have known for three years. In order to eliminate the so-called "fake hip width", I followed the tutorial and did 30 minutes of clam pose + 5 kilometers of jogging every day. After three months of hard work, the fake hip width did not improve, but my knees hurt for more than half a month. My aunt postponed the check-up for ten days. Only then did she find out that her body fat rate had dropped to 17%, and there were signs of patellar chondromalacia. To put it bluntly, I’m not afraid of being criticized. Nowadays, many tutorials on the Internet to “build your waistline in seven days” and “eliminate fat in ten days” are not useless. They are only suitable for a niche group with low body fat and good muscle foundation. For ordinary girls to follow them and practice blindly, there is a high probability that they will either have no effect or cause harm to the body.

There is a lot of quarrel in the industry about whether girls should train for strength: Supporters of the bodybuilding system will say, "Don't worry about heavy weights. Girls' testosterone is only one-twentieth of boys, so they can't become King Kong Barbies." Teachers of the women's shaping school will emphasize that "first find a sense of muscle recruitment, and use small weights and multiple reps to carve smooth lines." In fact, both statements are correct, but they are suitable for different people. If you have a good athletic foundation, no old joint injuries, and want to improve your basal metabolism, you can gradually increase the weight and practice compound movements such as squats and deadlifts.； But if you are a novice who has been sedentary for a long time and can’t find the feeling of force in the buttocks even when squatting, don’t rush to add plates to the bar. Practice the empty bar in front of the mirror first and find the feeling of muscle contraction every time you exert force. It is much more useful than squatting twice your body weight.

After all, girls are born with different physiological structures than boys. Taking leg training as an example, girls' Q angle (the angle between the line connecting the anterior superior iliac spine and the midpoint of the patella, and the line connecting the patella to the tibial tubercle) is 5-8 degrees larger than that of boys on average. They are more prone to knee buckling and patella wear. If you copy boys' "heavy weight and low reps" leg training plan, the risk of injury is really much higher. When I first started practicing deadlifts, I followed the trend and pulled 60kg. As a result, my waist flashed and it took me half a month to recover. Later, I went to a rehabilitation specialist for adjustments. I started to slowly find a sense of strength in my buttocks and hamstring muscles from 20kg. Now I don’t have any difficulty pulling 50kg, and my waist has never hurt.

If you are a mother who has just given birth, don’t just follow the trend and do rectus abdominis separation and repair training. There are now two different ideas in the industry: one group believes that the transversus abdominis should be activated first, and then perform separation and repair movements. The other group insists that the status of the pelvic floor muscles must be evaluated first. If the pelvic floor muscle strength is insufficient, training the rectus abdominis first will increase the abdominal pressure and aggravate the problem of urinary leakage. There is a mother around me who has stepped into this pit. She followed an online tutorial to train her rectus abdominis for a month, but the leakage became more serious. I went to the hospital for an evaluation and found out that the pelvic floor muscle strength was only level 2 and could not withstand the pressure on the abdomen.

In fact, you really don’t need to take fitness too seriously. You have to spend two hours in the gym before you practice. I usually take the subway to work. When I stand, I secretly squeeze my pelvic floor muscles. I hold it down for 10 seconds each time for 5 seconds. I do 10 times in one set. When I sit in the office, I stand up every 40 minutes and do 3 sets of shoulder press against the wall, 15 seconds each set. When I get home from work, I sit on the sofa. While watching dramas, I just did 100 glute bridges. I persisted with these small movements for half a year. The rounded shoulders and hump I had before have improved a lot, and the width of my fake hips has also improved a lot. It’s much more effective than the 2 hours of blind practice I did before going to the gym twice a week.

As for food, don’t listen to what others say, “You have to cut out carbs and eat boiled vegetables to keep fit.” Girls are naturally healthy when their body fat percentage is about 5% higher than that of boys. If the body fat percentage is lower than 20% for a long time, it is easy to cause aunt disorder and hair loss. Of course, if you are a female athlete preparing for a competition and are followed by a professional nutritionist and team doctor, it will be no problem if your body fat drops to 15%, but we ordinary girls really don’t need to suffer this. I haven't stopped eating milk tea hotpot, but I just pay attention to eating more protein when I eat, and eat two more mouthfuls of rice after training. My weight hasn't changed much, but my lines are much tighter than before.

To be honest, there are too many fitness tips on the Internet now. One day they say they need to practice this, and the next they say they need to practice that. Many people practice again and again and become anxious. One moment they feel their legs are thick, and the other they feel they have fat. But there is no standard answer to fitness. After you practice, you feel comfortable, your energy is getting better and better, and your clothes look better than before. That is the technique that is most suitable for you. It is more useful than copying a hundred training plans from others.